


untethered.

by AnxiousCupcake



Series: half-baked unrelated plot kitties [19]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kagami PoV, Not too much dialogue, Red Strings, Soulmate AU, and they're happy, but i'm letting u know so you know what to expect, but that ends sadly so i won't TAG it as such, i suppose i could tag this Adrigami and Lukanette, implied adrinette endgame, it hurts at first but it gets better, lukagami endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29533917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnxiousCupcake/pseuds/AnxiousCupcake
Summary: Kagami had thought finding whoever was on the other end of her red string would mean everything. But then he said he didn't want her, not like that. And she prided herself enough to want to bechosen, but her soulmate didn't want her. Where does she go from here?
Relationships: ( HEAVILY IMPLIED ), Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine/Kagami Tsurugi
Series: half-baked unrelated plot kitties [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980556
Comments: 9
Kudos: 47





	untethered.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry, idk what this is, it gets a tad dramatic in the end ;-; pls don't be mad or hate me.

Kagami walks down the banks of the river aimlessly. Funny (not really), because just yesterday she had thought she had found everything she had ever been looking for in her life. She had felt lucky, because not everyone had red strings. Not everyone found who was on the other end. 

Her mother thinks she is with Adrien. And Adrien… Well, she does not know where he’s gone. 

At that moment, she finds that she doesn’t care. 

She is not familiar with this feeling of being lost and confused. She flexes her fingers and forces herself to raise her hand to rest it on the embankment, and into her line of sight. She can see the red string, still wound tight around her little finger, the rest of it winding down the cobblestone street behind her, leading to wherever she knew Adrien to be. 

She does _not_ care. 

Really. 

A small, vindictive part in her wants to inform her mother and his father. Then, he’d have no choice. He’d have no choice if everyone knew. 

But the other, more predominant part of her - the honourable part, the one with enough self-respect that wants to be _chosen_ , the part that cares for him deeply - cannot and would not do it. She knows it had hurt him to make the decision, she knows he wished things would be another way, but they weren’t. 

And boy, doesn’t she know it. 

She wishes things were another way too. 

And they aren’t. 

And that’s okay. 

It has to be.

In that moment, she can only be thankful that the red strings were not visible to anyone except those tied together by fate. 

Till they were severed. 

Truth be told, she doesn’t even know if that was possible. Maybe its her imagination that her red string doesn’t glow as brightly anymore. 

But it doesn’t matter what Fate chose, because her _soulmate_ had chosen. Someone that is not her.

The thought still stings.

She closes her eyes and leans into the wind. 

Kagami insists on returning to Japan. She has gained the confidence that she would heal from whatever this was, but she knows she cannot do it when she sees, everyday, the other end of her string tied to a boy who daydreams about someone else. The soft glow on his face, and the flush on his cheeks when he thinks about someone that isn’t her. 

She doesn’t resent him for it, not anymore. 

If her upbringing, so similar to Adrien’s, has taught her anything, it is that there is a simple pleasure in being able to choose. And Adrien has taken that. How can she blame him?

But it was hard. And maybe she is a coward, but she is a coward with a sense of self-preservation. 

And so she has to leave. 

She can see on Adrien’s face that he knows why she is leaving. She is thankful he doesn’t push, and a little bitter that he doesn’t insist that she stay. 

As her flight takes off, she stares at the string, still wound around her finger, wondering as she puts distance between herself and her soulmate, if it would draw tighter. Become taut. Not let her leave. If it would pull on her little finger, and on his, as she went further away to signal that no, this wasn’t what was supposed to happen, that they were meant to be. But the universe, maybe in accordance to all the twisted rules written by Fate, does not intervene when she thinks she needs it to.

She falls asleep on the plane and wakes up in Japan, the string still flowing, and winding back to France.

She realises after sleeping on it, that maybe that’s for the better.

She cannot imagine a pain worse than being forced to be around someone who wouldn’t want her for an eternity. Having no choice to just leave.

It is night, when she is sitting alone in her room after a long day, that she realises that no, she isn’t imagining it. Her string is, in fact, losing its sheen. She wonders what that means about Adrien.

She hasn’t thought of him in quite some time.

She is in her final year of university when she meets him at an after-party in London. Luka Couffaine, lead singer and guitarist of Kitty Section. 

It is rather ironic, she thinks, that they had not met before. No, not ironic. A strange happenstance. He has a twin sister who studied at Francoise Dupont, Paris. Same class as Adrien. And as Marinette. She wonders if she would have met him had she stayed on in Paris and attempted at being friends with Adrien like he had wanted. 

When he asks her to dance, she notices that he had no questions about soulmates, no wary looks, like so many others before him. It was intriguing, to say the least. So she takes his hand with a smirk, and he lets her lead. 

It takes a _year_ for them to go on their first date. 

And only because she gets tired of lingering touches, unasked questions when they bid their goodbyes everytime he had to leave, unsaid explanations on the tips of their tongue everytime he came back to see her, every other month whether or not he was on tour. 

He is kissing her goodbye on the cheek again, _so close_ to her lips, when she intertwines her fingers with his. He looks down at her, blue eyes wide. 

“Go on a date with me,” she says seriously. 

He blinks, and then, to her dismay, he laughs. She pulls away, ready to leave, when he catches her by the wrist and pulls her into a hug. 

“You could at least have sounded _happy_ about it,” he murmurs into her hair.

She relaxes. “I wouldn’t know to be happy about it unless you agreed,” she argues pointedly. 

He chuckles quietly, arms still around her and she feels it in her bones. 

“I’d love to go on a date with you.”

They’re watching something cuddled on the couch in his suite. She is not paying attention to the screen, because she can’t take her eyes off of their intertwined hands. She often finds herself staring, because their hands are clasped and she can see the red string - duller than she has ever seen it before - appear from between their locked fingers and disappear out the door. 

“You’re staring again,” he says quietly, pulling her closer into his side.

“Sorry.”

“You do that a lot.”

It is not accusatory. Only an observation with a hint of curiosity.

She hums and brings their intertwined hands up, the string in full view. When she brings her other hand to caress her red string, he tenses. She looks at him in confusion.

“Luka?”

He gulps and looks away. 

Concern furrows her brows and she tucks her feet under herself before twisting her body to look at him. He’s tightened his grip on her hand, and she can feel his thumb rubbing unrhythmic circles on her wrist.

Her gaze flickers down to their connected hands, and a wave of epiphany washes over her, like ice cold water. 

“You have a _soulmate_ ,” she whispers, horrified, her grip starting to loosen.

His grip only tightens and his other hand comes around to stop her from ripping away from him. 

“Please-”

“I can’t believe you! I thought this meant-”

“My soulmate didn’t _want_ me!” he says, his voice loud, eyes clenched shit and she freezes in shock. 

“What?” 

He lets go, but she doesn’t scramble away. Her heart is beating out of her chest.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” he says, eyes still shut. “It’s practically unheard of, but I found my soulmate. And she didn’t want me.”

“Oh.”

She’s awestruck, and she gingerly picks up his hand, staring, knowing it wouldn’t be visible to her anyway.

What are the chances, she thinks.

“I have a soulmate too,” she says quietly as she brushes the hair out of his eyes, prompting him to look at her. 

The words echo in the silence of the room, and she let go of a burden she hadn’t even realised she had been carrying. A secret she hasn’t told a soul. Not her mother, not her best friend. 

She swallows thickly and looks up at him wistfully. “He didn’t want me either. He… He chose someone else.”

The admission, once said out loud, is as crushing as it is liberating. 

Luka’s lower lip quivers, and he pulls her into his lap, head tucked against her collarbone as her arms wind around his waist. 

She feels his tears soak her - _his_ \- shirt and for the first time in _years_ , allows herself to cry. 

She feels him kiss her jaw, her cheeks, the corner of her lips. 

"I love you." he says against her lips, and she kisses him harder than she ever had before, feeling more secure and safe than she ever has before. " _I'm_ choosing you."

She laughs through her tears, pulling away just a little bit to kiss him on the forehead tenderly. "I love you, too."

She brings their intertwined hands - the hands with their strings - between them and raises them to her lips. His breath catches and he watches her, eyes still misty. "I love you," he repeats, voice quiet, a little broken, a little happy. 

"I love you, too," she says again, and he smiles, and she knows he finds this reassuring. Just as she does. 

Whether this was where Fate meant for them to be or no, this is where they are and she loves it. She wouldn't have it any other way, and she thinks if given another chance, she would not change anything. Even if she could, she would not change anything because whatever Fate's plans, she doesn't care, because this was where she was meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> keeping this in the half-baked because i think this is an AU i'd like to explore further at some point in the future. _maybe_.


End file.
